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Digital Detroit

Rhetoric and Space in the Age of the Network

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Reviews

“In Digital Detroit, Jeff Rice demonstrates that the relatively static and measurable boundaries that give a city the status of a territory do not solely determine that city’s identity, which is being rewritten at each moment according to the dynamic relations of its inhabitants. Captivating in its writing, compelling in its argument, and innovative in its method and performance, this book makes a major contribution to the rhetorics of space and place, specifically, and to rhetorical theory and digital rhetorics more generally.”—Diane Davis, author of Breaking Up [at] Totality: A Rhetoric of Laughter and Inessential Solidarity
“Digital Detroit is the soundstage, and screenplay, for a lost episode of The Twilight Zone: a rhetorical study in demise and irony, ironworks and metal metonymy. Jeff Rice is a cross between Rod Serling and Bob Dylan, writing from the rubble of a re-‘mixed up confusion’ that is Detroit in the fifth dimension, tuning his keyboard somewhere on Wordward Ave. This is road trip reading at its best.”—Cynthia Haynes, associate professor of English, Clemson University

“[Digital Detroit] is a promise for Detroit in the new rhetorical practice of the network in the digital age. The promise comes in a rhetoric of “allowing spatial meanings to avoid the total theory or grand narrative gesture (Detroit is in ruins/Detroit is about to be rejuvenated). . . . [The book] ends with a sense of closure that leaves us thinking that the Rice tour of Detroit for the digital tourist was a good one, and not just a good one, but a tour “good enough” for Detroit and more than good enough as a hueretic model for us residents of the digital rhetorical network."--Eric Hall, Clemson University